The first of four articles on the history of vernacular architecture in New Jersey by... Janet W. Foster Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey O Janet W. Foster O GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 O December 2009 lthough a relatively small state, New local nature, traditional builders and their clients Jersey in the colonial period was at the shared mental blueprints of what a house—or Acenter of the shifting balance of power church, or store—should look like. The only among European countries. The Swedes, the thing open to discussion was its location and Dutch, and the English all claimed some portion relative size. of modern New Jersey at some period in the 17th The vernacular building traditions of century. Although Germany was not yet united Englishmen from different parts of Great Britain, into the country we now know, people from its and of the Swedes, the Dutch, the Germans, all provinces and city-states emigrated to the New were re-created to some extent in New Jersey in World, including New Jersey in the 18th century. the 17th century. When people established The boundaries of the state and its official themselves well enough to build a permanent language were set in 1664 when New Jersey’s house, they of course reached to the traditions land was fully claimed by they knew. Although in a the Duke of York in the sense frontier settlers, these settlement marking the peoples of England and Dutch surrender of New Sweden and Holland and Netherlands, but the Germany also thought of multiple heritages of its themselves—at first, at earliest European settlers least—as very much a part of would leave an indelible a community that extended mark for another century- to the other side of the and-a-half. Atlantic. They intentionally Architecture—the art of created “New” Jersey, filled creating habitable space— with communities named for was carried out in the 17th the Old World—Newark, and 18th centuries by Hanover, Middlesex—with an craftsmen-builders who eye to improving, but also entered an apprenticeship recalling, the old version of as young men, and retired A reconstruction of a Lenape hut—the first the place. as masters with apprentices New Jersey vernacular architecture. The Lenni Lenape had of their own. What was From http://www.lenapeprograms.info/ created perfectly serviceable known about the performance of materials, the vernacular dwellings of their own, including structural requirements of live loading and the long-houses that ably used the abundant local internal reinforcements necessary to allow a trees as a material. But the European settlers building to weather a strong nor’easter gale, had who encountered them had their own building all been learned by trial and error, over tradition in wood, and deemed their own centuries. The transmitted knowledge was solid, method superior. The de-forestation of Europe reliable, and largely resistant to innovation. during the medieval period is well known, as Vernacular, or populist, architecture was people chopped down trees for fuel, housing, local—it reflected climactic conditions, material and agricultural pursuits. Thus, although their availability, and culture. It influenced ideas of building traditions relied on wood, it had appropriate ways to build, and inside, the become rather a luxury by the time the first disposition of space. Whether one entered a settlers were reaching America in the 17th house directly into a kitchen, or directly into a century. Presented with all the timber that could hallway, reflected community traditions and be harvested, wood was used for all building culture. Whether roofs were tile, slate or thatch frames and trimwork, as had been the norm in reflected local familiarity with the handling of Europe. Because of the abundance of wood such materials; learning to handle the materials and the lack of brick and tile manufacturing was part of a particular culture. Because of its facilities, wood was adopted for roofing and sheathing of almost all buildings, giving the colonial settlements right from the start a distinctive, “American” look. The Swedes established forts and settlements along the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, in an attempt to establish an agricultural colony that would help support the motherland. Fort Nya Elfsborg was located near today’s Salem, New Jersey, and guarded the nearby farmers and woodsmen who settled there beginning in 1639. The Swedish colonists, brought with them the far-northern European tradition of building with tree trunks roughly squared and the laid one on top of the other—what we now call a No 17th century Swedish log cabins are known to “log cabin.” Although European versions could survive in New Jersey. The example here is demonstrate quite sophisticated carpentry, the probably 18th century, but its simple form cannot form also lent itself to a simplicity that did not be too far distant from its predecessors in nearby need much in the ways of tools or building locations in South Jersey. skills. Log cabins were held together by the corner notching; nails were useless with the big and all along the lands of Staten Island, Long timbers that could be cut from the virgin forests, Island, and New Jersey where there was direct and nails were a scarce and expensive imported water contact with New York Harbor. In these item anyway in the earliest days of settlement. far flung, rural places, the Dutch settlers used The Swedish colony was small and produced models of farm buildings from the Netherlands relatively few log buildings in New Jersey. The as their guide to building. In most cases, they Swedes themselves officially surrendered their found wood to be the best available material for forts and settlements to the Dutch in 1655, who building, and so transformed the traditional in turn gave them over to the English in 1664. brick farmhouses of Holland into frame houses But the sturdy log buildings along the Delaware in America. were seen by many later immigrants coming One-and-a half-stories tall, with steeply into Philadelphia from all over Europe, and the pitched gable roofs, the boxy-looking houses idea of the log building was thus successfully are identifiable by a number of features mostly transmitted to the New World. The log house, relating to their internal arrangements. Most first seen in the New World in settlements in characteristically, the Dutch used a distinctive New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania heavy timber frame that is composed of a series became an American archetype, linked with the of parallel “bents” running the length of the opening of the West for its ease in construction building. and the way it utilized the most abundant The bents are spaced about four feet apart material seen on the eastern half of the country. and tied together with sills and roof plates at the Dutch New Netherlands centered on the bottom and top. The framing design means that trading port of New Amsterdam, later New a Dutch house can easily be extended by York, which had an urban center from the adding more bents in a row—thus making the moment of its founding. In the city, Dutch house longer, but it is rare and difficult to tie the merchants re-created the brick buildings with framing in to additions that extend the house narrow facades topped by front-facing gables either upward or to the rear. familiar from Amsterdam and Leiden as soon as Inside, another distinctive feature of early they could. But New Netherlands was a water- Dutch houses in New Jersey would have been borne empire, and it stretched far up the the fireplace. The cooking fireplace of Dutch Hudson, River, inland to the Delaware River, tradition, urban or rural, was one of an open (Above) Wyckoff-Garretson House, Somerset County, NJ. Center door and right-hand side built about 1730; left side extension of the house Dutch and remodeling ca. 1800. The house has recently been restored and is open to the public on a hearth on an end wall, vented by a broad limited basis. (Below) Inside the Dutch framing chimney above. There were no walls on the system is clearly evident. sides of the hearth to enclose the fireplace. In the Netherlands, where trees had always been a limited commodity, cooking was done over a peat fire, which burns without generating a lot of smoke. In the New World, the Dutch found little peat, and lots of hardwood, and so burned that in their fireplaces. They quickly discovered that without side walls—or jambs—to their fireplaces, the hardwood smoke did not just float upward toward the chimney, but tended to fill the room instead. In very short order, the Dutch vernacular building tradition of jambless fireplaces was given up, and replaced with English style fireplaces, with sides, or jambs, that were designed to pull smoke up and out the chimney. See illustration above. In New Jersey, settlers of different nationalities tended to encounter each other frequently. Although individual neighborhoods or communities might be more-or-less homogenous, people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, and building traditions mixed together in the marketplace and in civil society. The skills of a trained builder were much in demand, as one of the defining there was a ready answer in the home of an characteristics of colonial America as a more-or- English neighbor or inn-keeper. less constant labor shortage, particularly among The English also had a heavy-timber tradition specialty skills like carpentry. Thus it is no of framing buildings, but it relied on surprise that for the Dutch “problem” of a construction of a series of interlocking boxes. It fireplace design incompatible with local fuel, may be helpful to conceptualize the English Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey O Janet W.